Heartstrings and Diamond Rings

by Jane Graves

  Brandon didn’t really care about the condition of the house. Let the First Baptist Church worry about that when he left town and it took possession.

  “There’s too much work that needs to be done,” he told her. “It’ll take more effort than you and your friends want to put in.”

  “We just need it to look good on the surface. It won’t be all that hard.”

  “No, Alison. I just really rather not.”

  “But it would be good PR for your business. Feel free to hand out your business cards. The more you integrate yourself into the community, the stronger your business will be.”

  If only she knew that was the last thing he wanted to do for the long haul. “I haven’t had business cards designed yet.”

  “That’ll cost you…hmm. Say, a box of Godiva?”

  “I still don’t get that.”

  “Trust me—you don’t want to know.”

  “Truthfully, I have about all the business I can handle already.”

  “Uh…thanks to whom? Is her name…Alison Carter?”

  “Hey, I comped your matchmaking fee, so we’re even on that.”

  “You still owe me.”

  “Yeah? How do I still owe you?”

  “You set me up with a felon, remember?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I thought we put that to rest.”

  “But I suffered psychological damage.”

  “Oh, you did not.”

  “No. I did. It’s just a delayed reaction. One of these days I’m going to be standing in the grocery store or something and suddenly start crying uncontrollably, and it’ll be your fault.”

  “You are so full of crap.”

  “Oh—did I mention this is for a good cause? The East Plano Preservation League. We do all kinds of good things for the preservation of history in East Plano.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’ll get you a copy of our mission statement. It spells it all out. Trust me—it’s a doozy.”

  Brandon shook his head. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  The smile melted away from Alison’s face, and she let out a disappointed sigh. “Oh. Okay. I understand.” She dropped her eyes, studying her shoes for a moment, then brought them back up to stare at him, looking like a homeless kitten in the rain. There was something about those big brown eyes staring up at him that made him lose his train of thought. Then that train hopped to another track, and he started wondering what such a sweet, innocent woman would look like in a tangle of sheets with morning sun streaming through the window.

  And then it struck him.

  She wasn’t nearly as innocent as those eyes made her seem. In fact, she was downright calculating.

  Hey, stupid. Wake up. She’s playing you!

  “Will you stop that?” Brandon said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Begging.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t have to. Your eyes are doing all the talking.”

  She tilted her head, adding a layer of lost little girl to the homeless kitten thing.

  “Will you stop that? God, you’re relentless.”

  And still she stared at him.

  Brandon closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. “You’re not going to get off this, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you’re going to make me feel like crap if I say no, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Say no, say no, say no. But still she was looking at him. He was going to regret this. He just knew it.

  “Fine,” he said glumly. “You can use my house.”

  “Yes!” Alison said, clasping her hands together. “You’re the best! Thank you!”

  Brandon couldn’t believe how the silliest things made Alison so happy. Yeah, he didn’t much like the idea of opening up his house to strangers, but he didn’t hate the expression of pure joy she wore right now.

  “Wait a minute. When is the tour?”

  “It’s not until the second week of October, but that’ll be here before we know it. I’d like to get the big stuff done around here in the next couple of weeks. Then we can come back a day or two before to do a final sprucing up. Will that be all right?”

  Brandon pulled up a mental calendar, wondering if he’d even still be around by then, but he realized he most likely would. They had until December to exercise the option, and while business was really picking up, he expected he’d need almost all of that time to get the money together he needed.

  “Okay,” she said. “Can I take a quick tour through the house and see what needs to be done? I’ll need to report back to the board.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ve already thrown myself on your mercy. Why stop now?” He circled his gaze around the living room. “This place could use a complete renovation. Just how much do you think is necessary to bring it up to par for the tour?”

  “I’m thinking just cosmetics. That’s it.”

  They went through the entry hall and the living room in short order. Nothing but cleaning and rearranging in there. Then they went into the dining room. Ditto. And the whole time Alison kept telling him how wonderful the woodwork was, and the crown moldings, and the light fixtures. Brandon had always had plenty of vision for renovating houses and seeing profit in the most dilapidated properties, but he would never consider living in a house like this if he had a choice. Alison, on the other hand, talked about it as if she’d stepped into Buckingham Palace.

  They went into the kitchen. “Okay, this room needs a paint job. But we can handle that.” She looked down. “The floor shows lots of wear, but I know where I can get a rug to put over it. If we can’t fix it, we’ll hide it.”

  Then they went out to the back patio.

  “The stone is cracked in a lot of places,” Alison said. “But if we trim the grass coming up through the cracks, it’ll hardly be noticeable. And I know I can get Simpson’s Nursery to donate a few big clay pots and some flowers to put in them. It doesn’t have to look perfect. Just pretty.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  “Otherwise everything looks—oh, boy.”

  “What?”

  She pointed to the magnolia. “That tree. It doesn’t look as if it’s been trimmed in twenty years. One bad thunderstorm with enough wind and one of those big branches will pop off and go right through your roof.”

  “Hmm. Maybe I can rent a chain saw. Trim it up.”

  “Have you ever used a chain saw?”

  “Uh…no.”

  “You cut your finger on the air-conditioning unit. I don’t have a big enough Band‑Aid if you lose a limb.”

  “Tree trimming is probably pretty expensive.”

  “You won’t know until you get an estimate.”

  Then Brandon remembered the guy in his grandmother’s files who did landscaping work. Yeah, he looked an ex-con, but he wouldn’t be hiring him for his handsome face.

  “There’s a guy who was a client of my grandmother’s who owns a landscaping business. I’ll see if he can drop by the day everybody comes to work on the house. But I’m warning you. If it’s going to be a lot of money, I’ll just have to hope thunderstorm season is mild this year.”

  “It’ll probably be cheaper than you think.”

  “You’re a real optimist, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve tried pessimism. It just doesn’t work for me. Let’s take a look at the second floor.”

  They went back inside and up the stairs, and Alison gushed over the stained-glass window on the midfloor landing. She also loved the black-and-white tile and the claw-foot tubs in the bathrooms and the walls of windows in the bedrooms. Then they went into the room where the pool table was, and her eyes lit up again.

  “Oh, my God,” she said as she walked slowly toward it. “That is the most amazingly beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s a little rough around the edges,” Brandon said. “It was in the house when my grandparents bo
ught it, and it was already a little beat up. Age hasn’t helped it much.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still gorgeous. Look at the legs! Lions? I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  Brandon smiled, pleased that somebody finally appreciated the old Brunswick Monarch. Tom still thought it looked like a piece of junk.

  “Would you like to play?” he asked her.

  “Really?” she said with a smile.

  “Sure.”

  “I’d love to,” she said, tossing her list and her purse to the chair behind her. “And you’d better look out. I’m pretty good at pool. Eight ball?”

  Brandon smiled furtively. “Eight ball it is.”

  As he gathered the balls, Alison grabbed a cue from the rack on the wall, rubbing the tip of it with chalk. She was dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a snug little T-top that drew his gaze right to her breasts, and he didn’t stop looking as she leaned over the table. He really needed not to do that. Unless she wasn’t looking. Then he intended to look all he wanted to.

  As it turned out, her proclamation of pool prowess turned out to be nothing but trash talk. Her stance was all wrong, and she lined up a shot with all the expertise of a five‑year‑old. She swung her arm back in a funny arc, then whacked the cue ball just a little too hard. Okay, a lot too hard. It leaped into the air, then clattered back to the felt. Then, unbelievably, it traveled the length of the table and actually collided with the balls. The seven headed for the corner pocket.

  Slowly.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Alison murmured as the ball crept toward the pocket. It teetered on the edge, then finally dropped. She threw both arms in the air. “Woo hoo! Did you see that?” She spun around to Brandon with a sly smile. “Ha. Told you I’m good.”

  He decided not to mention that it didn’t count if she hadn’t called the shot. “I had no idea. Let’s see if you can do it again.”

  Alison turned back around to study the table. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll sink that four, huh?”

  “The four? You might want to think about the nine instead.”

  “Yeah, of course you’d suggest that. It’s a harder shot. Do I look like a fool?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “You most certainly do not.”

  She lined up the cue ball with the four to knock it into a side pocket, only to stand up again with a quizzical expression. “Now, which one was I again? Stripes or solids?”

  “I thought you were good at this.”

  “I can shoot. I just can’t remember…you know. Which balls I am.”

  “Stripes.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking back at the solid four ball she’d had her eye on. “Well, then. Forget the four. That would be silly. The nine it is.”

  Alison’s gentle, self-deprecating humor was such a breath of fresh air after most of the women Brandon had known, ones who were either so insecure they couldn’t admit to a fault if their lives depended on it, or so egotistical they couldn’t admit to a fault if their lives depended on it.

  He rested on his cue, watching her, and as she leaned over again, he had the perfect angle to admire her ass. Her positioning was all wrong, assuming her goal was to play pool. If her goal was to drive him just a little bit crazy, she was positioned exactly right. For just a moment, he entertained himself with the thought of easing up behind her—just to correct her position, of course. He’d lean over, slide his hand down her arm, close his hand over hers, and there he’d be, his lips only inches from her neck, so close he could turn his head and—

  No. Off limits. Verboten. Get your mind back where it belongs.

  She leaned over her cue, and the dainty silver chain she wore around her neck swayed back and forth, sparkling in the lamp light. She moved her arm back, then took her shot. She missed the ball she was aiming for by approximately a foot and missed scratching by millimeters. Brandon leaned in, intending to dispatch the eleven and the ten simultaneously with a bank shot off the rail, which would set him up perfectly to take out the seven after that. But then it occurred to him that if he did that, a few shots later, the game would be over, and so would his entertainment for the evening.

  Instead, he made a half-ass shot that sent balls banking in ways that never were going to win the game for him. But then Alison got to shoot again.

  And he got to watch.

  Alison crunched up her eyebrows, her forehead crinkling, as she concentrated on the shot. It was an easy one, and the three disappeared into a side pocket. She got lucky and took out one more before missing the shot after that.

  Brandon dropped the twelve ball just to keep up, then missed the nine on purpose. Several rounds later, only the eight ball remained. He missed it on his turn, but managed to set it up so she could take it out with no problem.

  She moved around the table and took the final shot. The eight ball fell. She let out a whoop, then turned and gave him a smug smile. “Well. You just didn’t know who you were up against, did you?”

  “Oh, no. I knew exactly who I was up against.”

  “Which was why you let me win?”

  Brandon drew back. “What makes you think I let you win?”

  “Did you?”

  “Well…yeah. But what made you think that?”

  “Because you missed shots even I could have made. And you held the cue like somebody who actually knew what he was doing.”

  “Does that offend you?”

  “Did you let me win because I’m a girl?”

  Hell, yes. Would he have been watching a guy’s ass as he shot? “Yes. That’s it exactly. Men are genetically predisposed to win at pool, and I’m a big believer in affirmative action.”

  She actually laughed at that. “Good. That meant I actually got a chance to take a shot. How much fun is it when one person runs the table and the other one just stands there?”

  He grinned. “Well, if you’re the one running the table and there’s money on the game, it can be one hell of a lot of fun.”

  “So that’s what it takes to flush you out? Money?” She reached into her purse. “There,” she said, slapping a dollar down on the table. “I’ve had my fun. Now let’s see what you’ve got.” She grabbed the rack. “I’ll put the balls in the thingy.”

  “The thingy?”

  “I don’t know the technical term.”

  “That would be ‘rack.’”

  “Whatever.” She deposited the balls inside the rack, then lifted it. Brandon took a position at the opposite rail and prepared to break.

  “Hey!” Alison said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s see your money first.”

  Brandon reached into his wallet and matched her dollar bet. “You’re such a high roller.”

  “I’m feeling lucky.”

  Brandon leaned over. Broke. In fewer than five minutes, he’d run the table. He dropped the eight ball to finish things off, then stood up and leaned casually on his cue.

  “Wow,” Alison said. “You really are good.”

  “And a dollar richer.”

  “Too bad we weren’t betting when you let me win.”

  “If we’d been betting, I wouldn’t have let you win.”

  “If we’re going to play again, you need some kind of handicap that’ll give me a chance.”

  “Sweetheart, I could tie one hand behind my back and I’d still beat you.”

  “Well, then,” she said, taking a step closer to him, “maybe you should teach me how to play better.”

  He smiled. “Maybe I should.”

  They looked at each other a long time. Gradually the moment shifted, and Brandon’s vision grew a little blurry around the edges until the only thing in sharp focus was Alison’s face. She blinked, and it seemed as if those golden lashes stroked her cheeks in slow motion before rising again to reveal those beautiful brown eyes. A strand of hair fell along her cheek, then curved beneath the junction of her jaw and throat. Then his thoughts went completely off the rails. He started to imagine pushing that strand of hair asid
e and touching his lips to the place it had been, and then—

  “Hey, Brandon. Alison. What’s going on?”

  Brandon spun around to find Tom standing at the door. Brandon blinked his way back to reality, resenting the interruption even though he knew it was probably for the best. Tossing Alison down on the pool table and having his way with her probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.

  “Just playing a little pool,” Brandon said.

  “Well,” Alison said. “I guess I’d better go. I’m late for movie night at my father’s house.”

  “Movie night?”

  “Yeah. We watch a movie together. If my father likes it, all is well. If he doesn’t, I get to hear all about how Hollywood just doesn’t make good movies anymore and everyone who lives there is going straight to hell.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “I think we’ve talked about everything that needs to be done before the home tour, haven’t we?”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said, wincing. “But I’m still not totally thrilled with people I don’t know being in my house on the day of the tour.”

  “I know. But I’ll be acting as your tour guide. And we’ll have people posted in most of the rooms to make sure nobody touches anything. How about Saturday after next for a workday to get the house shipshape?”

  “Sure.”

  “You won’t regret letting us use your house. Really. It’ll be fun. And when we finish, it’ll be all pretty. Won’t that be nice?”

  Great, he thought. The First Baptist Church is going to love it.

  “You’re opening this house up for a home tour?” Tom said. “Why the hell did you agree to that?”

  Brandon shoved a pair of TV dinners into the microwave, set the timer, and turned it on. Then he sat down at the kitchen table with Tom. “I don’t know. I wasn’t going to, but then Alison was standing there looking up at me, and then…” He shrugged helplessly. “Then suddenly the words were coming out of my mouth.”

  “You’re such a pushover.” Tom went back to reading something on his phone. Then he stopped and looked up again. “Wait a minute. Since when are you a pushover?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I didn’t think so. I’ve never seen anybody negotiate the way you do—with a smile on your face and a knife behind your back. You don’t give an inch of ground you don’t intend to. So what’s going on here?”